SSUN Project - The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Office of Sexually Transmitted Infections, Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Viral Hepatitis (CDPHE-OSHV), in partnership with the Denver Sexual Health Clinic (DSHC) at Denver Health (DH), proposes to expand STI and syndemic surveillance services in community and sexual health clinical settings throughout SSuN, Cycle 5. Sexually transmitted infections pose a significant public health challenge in Colorado. Between 2019 and 2023, there was an average annual 9,267 cases of Gonorrhea reported to CDPHE-OSHV and an annual 2,376 syphilis cases (all stages) reported. During that time, DH/DSHC served an annual average of 6,979 unique patients. CDPHE-OSHV and DH/DSHC are applying for Strategies A, B, C.3, and C.5. This collaboration will improve provider and community-level compliance with screening and preventive services recommendations, improve understanding of community-wide health equity issues across multiple demographic and behavioral groups, and establish an evidence base for expanding access to HIV/STI prevention, sexual health services, and interventions. DPHE-OSHV and DH/DSHC, with their extensive experience and expertise in public health surveillance, analysis, data management, and evaluation, will standardize and enhance EHR and surveillance tools. This will improve the timely ascertainment of patient characteristics, clinical and preventive services, laboratory testing, and treatments. CDPHE-OSHV and DH/DSHC will enhance EHR and surveillance tools to improve timely ascertainment of Mpox preventive services, HIV PEP and PrEP, Doxy PEP, meningococcal B, and hepatitis vaccines. CDPHE-OSHV will conduct enhanced patient and provider interviews, integrating into existing workflows when appropriate. DH/DSHC will implement periodic client surveys to support quality improvement. Finally, CDPHE-OSHV and DH/DSHC will routinely summarize and disseminate quality assurance reports, evaluation results, and important project findings among sexual health providers across Colorado and nationally. Relational data tables, with the required data elements will be provided at the required frequency and formatted per project requirements. The Colorado SSuN project will bring together clinical and public health professionals with significant experience and expertise in public health surveillance, analysis, data management, and evaluation. CDPHE-OSHV and DH/DSHC have documented organizational capacity and infrastructure, as well as strong stakeholder and community relationships to offer high-quality work in implementing the proposed strategies and meeting or exceeding all identified SSuN project outcomes.
